FLL: Local airports using planespotters as additional security
Nov 28, 2015, 5:55 pm
#1
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FLL: Local airports using planespotters as additional security
A rare outbreak of common-sense at Fort Lauderdale:
WSVN Chanel 7 News: Local airports using planespotters as additional security (Nov 26, 2015)
A short excerpt:
WSVN Chanel 7 News: Local airports using planespotters as additional security (Nov 26, 2015)
A short excerpt:
"It's kind of a hobby," said Fort Lauderdale International Airport Watch's Suresh Atapattu. "Just like some people have stamp collecting, people watch football."
Atapattu's hobby is planespotting. Just like trainspotters with trains, planespotters spend hours at airports all over the country, enamored with aviation. Their hobby of watching planes, however, is now evolving to one expanding our airports' overall security plans. "They call it having like a neighborhood watch around people's homes," Atapattu said. "This is kind of an airport watch."
They've gone through background checks, security training and at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, are integrated as "FLL plane watch," where they use their long lenses for their hobby... and the lookout. "A lot of us are out here a lot of weekends," Crips said. "You get a feel for the flow of things and you can recognize things that seem strange."
Around the country, about a dozen airports are now doing this, including Phoenix, Chicago and right here in Miami.
Atapattu's hobby is planespotting. Just like trainspotters with trains, planespotters spend hours at airports all over the country, enamored with aviation. Their hobby of watching planes, however, is now evolving to one expanding our airports' overall security plans. "They call it having like a neighborhood watch around people's homes," Atapattu said. "This is kind of an airport watch."
They've gone through background checks, security training and at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, are integrated as "FLL plane watch," where they use their long lenses for their hobby... and the lookout. "A lot of us are out here a lot of weekends," Crips said. "You get a feel for the flow of things and you can recognize things that seem strange."
Around the country, about a dozen airports are now doing this, including Phoenix, Chicago and right here in Miami.
Nov 29, 2015, 5:04 am
#2
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Uh... common sense?
Hogwash!
These people are nothing but hobbyists who like to take photos of planes. The idea that they can add anything to security is ludicrous.
But there are more insidious aspects to this program. If you're a hobbyist who isn't wearing the brightly colored vest, will you be harassed by "suspicious police" or a paranoid public who got their idea of what terr'ists look like from watching too many episodes of 24 and NCIS? And exactly what kind of background checks and "security training" did these people get?
The whole concept of turning the general public into paranoid watchdogs, constantly on the lookout for Osama bin Laden's nephew planting a big, round bomb with a burning fuse in the wheel well of a 707, is right out of South Park.
These people have gone from hobbyists, enjoying photography in a public place, to wannabes. They're even worse than TSA. How many false alarms will they be calling in? How long until they start calling the police for planespotters who haven't gone through their ridiculous "training" and aren't wearing the childish orange vests? How long until there is a terminal evac or even an airport shutdown based on a mistaken observation by some paranoid planespotter who thinks he's a security specialist because he attended an afternoon seminar?
True common sense would be realizing that people with cameras in public places are not suspicious or dangerous in any way, shape, or form, and leaving them the hell alone to take their photos in peace, not recruiting them into some new-age brownshirt program and turning them into "special deputies".
Hogwash!
These people are nothing but hobbyists who like to take photos of planes. The idea that they can add anything to security is ludicrous.
But there are more insidious aspects to this program. If you're a hobbyist who isn't wearing the brightly colored vest, will you be harassed by "suspicious police" or a paranoid public who got their idea of what terr'ists look like from watching too many episodes of 24 and NCIS? And exactly what kind of background checks and "security training" did these people get?
The whole concept of turning the general public into paranoid watchdogs, constantly on the lookout for Osama bin Laden's nephew planting a big, round bomb with a burning fuse in the wheel well of a 707, is right out of South Park.
These people have gone from hobbyists, enjoying photography in a public place, to wannabes. They're even worse than TSA. How many false alarms will they be calling in? How long until they start calling the police for planespotters who haven't gone through their ridiculous "training" and aren't wearing the childish orange vests? How long until there is a terminal evac or even an airport shutdown based on a mistaken observation by some paranoid planespotter who thinks he's a security specialist because he attended an afternoon seminar?
True common sense would be realizing that people with cameras in public places are not suspicious or dangerous in any way, shape, or form, and leaving them the hell alone to take their photos in peace, not recruiting them into some new-age brownshirt program and turning them into "special deputies".
Nov 29, 2015, 5:09 am
#3
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